Frende mine. Your Wordes have Borne in me a great Saddnesse. These Ryftes you speake of willt open a New Dawne of Energy and Thoughte for Mankinde and, thereon, all Thynges that dwelleth ‘pon thys Lande, I am assured of it.

As the Balle raysed High gaines the Wille to return to its originalle Stayte so too willt those Thynges moved to thee Ryft gain the Wille to return unto thee Naturalle Lande, surfeit with Power…

Captured using advanced Obfuscope technology, the presence of this grim image – scrawled on a Wester Choke wall in a thick, red ink – is a worrying development in local sigilomancy.

Is there perhaps some tie between the emergence of this dread figure and the proximity of the City Librarium, with its unmentioned repository of certain tomes…?

“And be’est Yom T’thbeh called the Great Angler and His symbol be’est the Great Hook for with it hunteth He for Men and for the Souls of Men, and none shallt rest whilst hunteth He…” – Within the Nights of Men, Abillard (expurg.)

At the gutter-fringes of the Limbic Quarter, the human run-off from more traditional thaumic occupations blends into new and strangely twisted hybridisations. Some are transient, self-selecting themselves out of viability through accident or stagnation, but many persist into predatory or parasitic niches where they feed on the remnants of the underclass.

Aromanciers haunt the alleyways, grey-blue clouds of nerve-quickening prestidigitalis incense flowing from censers or trailing from the hems of their glyph-strewn robes, as they take furtive audience from watery-eyed adherents of the Red Lotus. Strange and fluting gibberings, repetitive litanies of nonsense numbers and other half-aware strangeness float in the air around their wavering figures, weaving through their smoke-smothered words.

With joints made arthritic and twisted by constant flexion/extension, jitter-witches pulse erratically with the coronal discharge of stolen nervous energy. Their scorch-marked sacks rattle-clack-clack with collections of spark-filled jars, glowing dully like fairy fireflies and destined eventually for the braincase of some scuttling Jack-A-Doll.

But the worst, perhaps, lurks in rock-lined cellars where the strangely bubbling vats of promethean demi-urgeons belch and roil as pallid patchwork creatures gestate within their brass-bound wombs. The bristling ozone stench of sparking lode-bearers, suspended on copper wires above smoke-glass jars of acid, twists and escapes up through corroded grilles to burn eyes and nostrils far above.

Citizens are reminded that unlicenced thaumaturgical endeavours are prohibited by Law.

Optick image of a confiscated demi-urgeon terata (destroyed)Reproduced by kind courtesy of His Lordship’s Dept. of Maintenance & Pursuance

The city broods under darkening storm clouds as oily rain cascades down from the heavens, running like ichor along the streets’ arterial gutters. Shadows stalk the alleyways, only briefly banished by the hanging elektryck globes which flicker and spit like vipers. Steam rises from gratings and coalesces into vaguely human forms, dancing and whirling, before collapsing into wisps of near-nothingness. Water leaks and drips through ancient wood, swelling and distending the beams of houses that shudder and moan like dying grandfathers.

A haze of colour, just a shade short of black, hangs over the Limbic Quarter. Looking at it hurts the eyes, burning writhing images on the retina. Spires and chimneys below the cloud glow violet as invisible and nameless energies smear through the sky to ground themselves in the cold, rain-slicked buildings.

A thaumarc, a mage mist. Emanations of spent power flaying the skin off reality.